community outreach

With our photo contest coming to an end, don’t forget that you can take some of those beautiful shots home with you! Photos will be on display at Baka Gallery and Cafe located at 2256 Bloor St W. (Bloor West Village) where you can bid on prints in a silent auction, from MAY 26 – MAY 30. The exhibit will wrap at our Award Ceremony 7:00pm on MAY 30th. Funds raised from the silent auction will be used to plant a native wildflower garden. So be sure to check out the display and bid on your favourites to support your local SCB chapter!

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Have a great photo? Why not share it for a chance to win a digital camera! Today the SCB-TO Nature & Wildlife Photography Contest, sponsored by Downtown Camera & Olympus, opens for submissions. Residents from across the GTA are encouraged to get outside and explore with their camera. Contestants can submit photos in three categories, Flora, Fauna and Landscape, until May 14th.

To enter just visit www.scbtorontophotos.com and create an account, then upload up to five (5) of your original photos, and finally order display prints for judging & exhibition. Prints that you provide will help SCB-TO raise funds for local conservation projects through our Silent Auction. We’re also excited to announce that the highest ranked photos will be publicly exhibited at the stylish Baka Gallery Café from May 26th to 30th.

Even if you’re not a shutterbug you can vote and share your favourite entries with friends online. Our goal is to get communities around our city thinking about conservation issues and more engaged with the natural world around them.

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Our 2nd field season begins!

With support from Rouge Park, we are now beginning our 2nd field season. We spent last Thursday setting up our pan traps on 14 sites in Rouge Park, which is soon to be Canada’s first urban national park. We are continuing to develop a pollinator diversity baseline and are also asking the question, ‘how do pollinators respond to different vegetation communities’. Our sampling design allows us to gain insights into how restoration activities on park lands contribute to diversity in pollinators.

The presence of native pollinators is crucial to the success of park restoration and ecosystem sustainability. They provide the ecosystem service of pollinating native plants which provide food and shelter for other native animals like songbirds and small mammals. In recent years, some pollinator species have shown rapid declines. The Rusty-patched Bumblebee, for example, went from being the 4th most common species in southern Ontario to the rarest in just a few decades.

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The Toronto Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology is embarking on an exciting new project at Rouge Park. With the help of partners at Rouge Park and volunteers we will be:

Searching the park for the endangered Rusty-patched Bumblebee

Monitoring park pollinator diversity

Initiating outreach and education programs about the importance of pollinators in the park

The presence of native pollinators is crucial to the success of park restoration and ecosystem sustainability. They provide the ecosystem service of pollinating native plants which provide food and shelter for other native animals like songbirds and small mammals. In recent years, some pollinator species have shown rapid declines. The Rusty-patched Bumblebee, for example, went from being the 4th most common species in southern Ontario to the rarest in just a few decades.

We need volunteers
Interested in volunteering with SCB-TO this summer on our SCB Goes Rouge Pollinator Project? We need volunteers to help with field work (including monitoring of bee pollinator diversity), community outreach, and lab work (including organizing, pinning, mounting specimens). To help us get all our volunteers organized we are asking you to fill out our volunteer recruitment survey. This will help us to coordinate everyone, organize transportation, and fit you into the best volunteer spots given your interests. This should not take more than 5 minutes of your time.